All Articles Tagged comics

Could Apple’s still unannounced, non-existant (for consumers anyway) iTablet be the ultimate comic book reader? Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Apple aficionado, and Sheldon-esque comic book lover Andy Ihnatko suggests just that. When writing about LongBox, which seeks to do for comics what iTunes did for music (i.e. bring a fractured, self-destructive, myopic industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century), he says:

I’m pretty sure that Apple is entering into a formal alliance with LongBox. When I asked Hoseley about what kind of partnerships the company is forming, he spoke vaguely of what was taking up most of his time at the moment: a lengthy and complicated agreement with a seriously large company operating in the media space.

I pressed him for more details while on the record. Rantz would only hint that this specific company had received high-profile coverage in both the Engadget and Gizmodo blogs in the previous week.

Would I love to have read Planetary #27 on a gorgeous capacitive multi-touch display? Absolutely. Would the next logical step be dynamic content a la Watchman motion comic? Absolute-lier! Do we expect to see Steve Jobs hold up an iTablet in January, clearly showing the latest issue of Ultimate Avengers, Captain America in tight-focused frenzy? Who knows at this point, but the comic industry will go the way of the dinosaur if they don’t adopt an iTunes-like online distribution method and soon, so as much as some of us want it, they need it.

The iPhone already has Comics, with a lot of independent content. Marvel and DC, where are you?

(Tangential – Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest shareholder and Disney just bought Marvel.)

[via MacBreak Weekly. Photoshop above yet again a homage in honor of Windows 7 launch day!]

Comics [$0.99 - iTunes link] serves as both an iPhone formatted comic book store and reader. (Think iTunes but for comics). comiXology was kind enough to give us a preview of the app, which will be officially announced tomorrow at the San Diego Comic Con, home of all things good and geeky in the ‘verse.

First, Comics costs $0.99 because it uses in-app purchases to allow you to buy paid content (more comics). Apple says “free apps stay free”, so anything using in-app purchase has to be a paid app. Hence, the minimal price. On to the app.

There are multiple ways to find comics, featured, free, top 25, and browse/search. Lots of information and a few preview images are provided for each, along with a link to buy print versions, which opens a WebView to Amazon.com with an option to move it into Safari.

A good amount of free comics available — I went immediately for Robert Kirkman’s excellent Invincible. You need to set up an account before you can download comics, but it’s fairly quick (it does ask your birthdate, presumably for age-based ratings reasons). Once you’ve set up your account, you can download away. It took me 25 seconds over Rogers 3G to get a comic. Not bad.

A tutorial walks you through the “guided” mode of comics reading, and then away you go. It took me a second to get used to the animated way in which Comics takes you through panels, but it works well. You can turn to landscape when wanted, or disable rotation if it bothers you.

Of course, there’s no Marvel (think Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man) or DC (Batman, Superman) titles to be found, and for that I blame the same kind of slow thinking that long plagued music and still plagues other media to some extent.

It does give the independents a little room to shine, however.

Note: The developers are currently reporting problems with in-app purchases and the iTunes servers behind them, but say they’re working with Apple to resolve them. In the mean time, the free comics are all working just fine.

If you’re a comics fan, and you give Comics a try, let us know how you like it!

Tons of screen caps after the break!

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SNIKT! How appropriate that CrackBerry Kevin SMASH! was homage’d straight from the pages of Hulk vs. Wolverine, as it seems from the Evil-Comic above that everyone’s favorite Canadian mutant maniac might just be heading his way soon.

Remember: he’s the best there is at what he does, even if what he does isn’t very nice… to multi-touch smartphones, bub.

(True geeks are free to make their own Storm jokes here).

[via excaliburca on Twitter]

Yeah, let the speculation continue! No sooner did we blog about Apple’s rumored March 24th Special Event being an iPhone 3.0 or even iTablet into, then we came across this wonderful article up at Newsarama.com featuring uber-Apple tech journo, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times. Most tantalizingly:

“There’s something I keep hearing, and I don’t think I’d rank it as high as a rumor, but it’s an interesting story that I keep hearing, that for awhile, trucks loaded with books would arrive at a loading dock on the Apple campus, and offload big, big, big, big, huge load of books, and then the trucks would leave empty. And Apple does not have a 100,000-book employee library there on the Apple campus,” Ihnatko said. “So one is prone to believe that they’re doing something with these books, such as turning them into text for some purpose we can only guess at. There’s been a long-standing rumor that Apple has been silently preparing to open a bookstore on the iTunes store, and they want to make sure that they have a very large stock of electronic titles when they do open.

The entire article is definitely worth a read, and given the way print media, with associated delivery and distribution costs is going, an Apple-fronted e-Book reader would be good news. An Apple and iTunes Store front e-Comic Book reader could save Marvel and DC from their own current myopia as well.

Of course, even the mighty Amazon has failed to show there’s a mainstream market for the Kindle yet (we don’t believe they’ve even hit the magic 1 million sold mark yet, have they?) and Apple has never been one to lead markets, only consumer-ize them, so we’ll see…

Meantime, who wants one?

Listen up, true believers! TUAW is reporting that Marvel Comics, home to the X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and Spider-Man has announced at the New York Comic Con:

their intention to sell “In-Motion” comic books through the iTunes Store. According to Marvel, the In-Motion comics go beyond the paperback books with animated panels and voice-over work from popular actors. Sounds like something that could be a lot of fun on an iPod touch or iPhone.

New stuff? Old stuff? In between? Will we be getting the heights of the Phoenix Saga and Astonishing X-Men or the dregs of Secret Invasion and Ultimatum? The tears of the Boy Who Collected Spider-Man, the cheers of Nextwave, or the jeers of Hulk Red?

Grab your Extremis kit, pop your admantium claws, sling some webs (any size!), and let us know just how exactly Marvel needs to SMASH! it up in iTunes!

iXcelsior!